Axes of near-symmetry
I have to thank two short women and a tall man for revealing to me that “axes of near-symmetry” are intimately related to the phenomenon of “orientation constancy”. The tall man was looking over a low wall and he was depicting its top as sloping down from left to right. The short women drew it as horizontal. The fact that the man could see a particular field beyond it that the women were unable to see, meant that he was the only one of the three that was being influenced by what I later came to call the “bakery facade illusion”. The women were right that the top of the wall was horizontal. To find why the man was also right, click on the link below to Chapter 18 of my book “Drawing with Knowledge”. Its title is “Axes of symmetry, recession and the constancies”.
CHAPTER 18 : AXES OF SYMMETRY & RECEDING SURFACES
Some photos showing axes of near-symmetry and receding surfaces
Click here for full contents list for both books on drawing
BOOK 1 : “DRAWING WITH FEELING”
Chapters so far loaded:
- Introduction to book 1 of “Drawing with Feeling”
- Chapter 1: Accuracy versus expression
- Chapter 2: Traditional artistic practices
- Chapter 3: Modernist ideas that fed into new teaching methods
- Chapter 4: the sketch and explaining the feel-system
- Chapter 5: Negative spaces
- Chapter 6: Contour drawing
- Chapter 7: Copying Photographs
- Chapter 8: Movement, speed & memory
- Chapter 9: The drawing lesson- preparation
BOOK 2 : “DRAWING WITH KNOWLEDGE”
Chapters so far loaded:
- Chapter 13 : Introduction to “Drawing with Knowledge”
- Chapter 14 : Linear Perspective
- Chapter 15 – The perspective demonstration,
- Chapter 16 : Eye-line problems
- Chapter 17 : Head movement
- Chapter 18 : Axes of symmetry & receding surfaces
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Thank you for this Francis. This is a topic rarely discussed in drawing books. It is easy to be deceived by what we observe, so this topic helps us to become more aware of what to look out for.